Amazon lets kids run amok with in-app purchases, says FTC suit

The Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit against Amazon over its allowance of allegedly unauthorized in-app purchases charged by children to their parents' accounts, according to a press release Thursday. Kids could charge their parents up to $99.99 per in-app purchase, often without needing a password, writes the FTC, and Amazon's system has been lacking in controls since it was introduced in November 2011.

As Ars pointed out in December 2011, Amazon has long had parental controls for in-app purchases in its Kindle Fire OS. However, in its early days, the parental controls were off by default, and in-app purchases were allowed by default.

The FTC writes that Amazon updated its policy in March 2012 to require a password only for in-app purchases over $20. Amazon updated the process yet again in March 2013. Now, authorizing with a password opens an undisclosed 15-minute window when any attempted in-app charges will go through.

The FTC says the problem was compounded by the fact that parents often thought their children were buying things in apps with virtual currency rather than the attached Amazon account. Amazon previously announced it wasn't scared of the FTC and was ready to go to court over the situation.

The FTC previously grappled with Apple over in-app charges in a case that was settled earlier in 2014.